


Paris Missed Us

by youreyeslookliketheocean



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post Reveal, Post-Reveal Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Post-Reveal Pre-Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24775150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreyeslookliketheocean/pseuds/youreyeslookliketheocean
Summary: After Hawkmoth's defeat, Marinette returns to Paris from her fashion internship in Milan.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 14
Kudos: 172





	Paris Missed Us

Adrien stepped out of the cab and let the door fall shut behind him. He’d been to the Dupain-Cheng bakery several times in the last few months, but this was the first time Marinette would be there. She’d started her internship in Milan back in August, and hadn’t been home in almost six months. It was crazy how slow time seemed to pass in Paris without her there, and within that time, it felt like a million things had changed.

For starters, now that Hawkmoth was defeated and Adrien’s father had been placed in jail for his crimes, Adrien didn’t live in the mansion anymore. Instead, he’d moved out and bought his own flat with money he’d saved in his bank account. He had more than enough for his first few rounds of bills, but knowing he’d have to keep paying them in the future, he took it upon himself to find a new job. Modeling was immediately out of the question, though he’d occasionally take up a gig or two for friends. And after some hunting online and around the city with Nino, Adrien finally landed a job working at a local café. Ironically named The Cat Café.

Another thing that had changed, Nino and Alya were engaged. Adrien had gotten the moment on film for them, knowing that Alya would hate him if he didn’t. It had been a sweet and mostly private proposal, with only Adrien and a few of Alya and Nino’s other close friends there to witness it. Their wedding was set for June.

The last thing that had changed was Marinette and Adrien’s own relationship. Things had been slightly awkward after the reveal, but they’d quickly rebounded back into comfortable friendship. In fact, Adrien would argue that their friendship strengthened. Marinette mysteriously stopped stammering around him, and actually started to tease him a lot when they met up with friends or hung out together. She’d supported him more than anyone else after his dad went to prison, and Adrien suspected that was one of the reasons they’d ditched the awkward stage so quickly. He needed her then more than ever, and she’d put aside whatever feelings she had about the reveal to be able to comfort him. It meant a lot to him that she was willing to do that. 

After she left for Milan, they’d stayed in contact every day with video calls and texting. Adrien’s favorite time of day had become the late night hours when Marinette would call him, ranting and raving about some design she needed to complete before morning and had hardly started on yet. He assured her, every time, that she’d make it through just fine. And she did. Her career was taking off, and he was so proud of her he thought his heart might explode. If anyone deserved this, it was Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

Despite all the changes occurring, though, one thing hadn’t changed in the time Marinette was away. The same “thing” that was making Adrien’s heart hammer against his chest as he rounded the side of the bakery.

He felt like he was going to pass out. Anxiety made his fingers twitch and his breath quicken, but he ignored it as best as he could.

He raised a hand to the bakery’s wooden back door, and knocked twice.

There were three seconds of silence in which the only sound was Adrien’s breathing. Then, the doorknob twisted and the door swung open. Light from inside spilled onto the nearly pitch black porch, and all the air left Adrien’s lungs in a whoosh.

She was beautiful. Just as beautiful as when they were teenagers. Just as beautiful as she had been during all their late night video calls, and in all the pictures he’d seen from Milan.

Her pigtails were a bit longer now, the ends trailing over the edges of her shoulders. But her eyes were the same ever-sparkling blue, and her smile still managed to stop his heart in its tracks.

“Adrien,” she breathed. And to hear her say that out loud, not over a phone or video call, made Adrien’s heart leap.

Her arms immediately flung forwards to wrap him in a hug, and he dazedly returned the gesture. She was standing on tiptoe to reach him, so he picked her up, pushing his face into the crook of her neck and inhaling her scent. The smell of vanilla and fresh baked bread made him dizzy.

“Mari I missed you so so so so _so_ much,” he sighed into her shoulder.

“I missed you too,” she whispered back.

For the first time in a long time, Adrien felt himself completely relax. Marinette had wrapped her legs around his torso when he lifted her, and he shuddered at the familiarity of carrying her like this.

How many times before the reveal had he escorted Marinette to safety? How many times had she clung on for dear life as he leapt and bounded through Paris?

After a minute, he set her down. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her pink skirt before glancing up at him. He thought he spotted tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, but she turned away before he could confirm them. He wouldn’t have judged if she had been crying. His own eyes stung as she led him into the familiar bakery.

“Maman! Papa! Adrien’s here!” Marinette called out as they stepped inside.

“Hello, Adrien!”

Sabine appeared first, in the doorway to the main bakery area. She hurried over to give Adrien a hug, and he smiled as her arms encircled him.

“Hi, Mrs. Dupain-Cheng.”

Sabine stepped back, shaking her head. “How many times do I have to tell you? ‘Sabine’ is just fine, sweetie.”

“Sabine,” Adrien corrected, smiling fondly at Marinette’s mother.

Tom appeared behind her a second later, his hands covered in flour and mustache tinted white. He spotted Adrien and smiled, but Adrien gulped.

It had admittedly been quite a few years since Tom was akumatized into Weredad, and while he didn’t blame Tom for what had happened when he was akumatized, being beaten nearly to a pulp atop a tower of thorns wasn’t exactly something you forgot about. 

He unconsciously shifted backwards, and Marinette grabbed his arm.

“Come on, I’ve got something to show you,” she said.

Adrien gratefully followed her up the stairs, waving a quick goodbye to her parents as they left. They took the stairs two at a time to the top, where Marinette led him through their living room and up another set of stairs to her bedroom.

This wasn’t new to Adrien. He’d been to her house so many times before—as both Adrien, and Chat Noir—that he was pretty familiar with the layout. Nevertheless, his heart still gave a leap when she pushed open the trapdoor, and there was her room. A pink glowing lamp washed the entire room in a rosy glow. Her desktop computer was on, the screen displaying a background image of the Eiffel Tower amidst a pink and red sunset. 

Adrien chuckled, hopping into her room after her.

“Didn’t that screen used to be me?” he asked, grinning as Marinette’s face turned bright red. “I distinctly remember coming in here as Chat Noir to see my handsome model face on your screen.”

“Glad to know your ego hasn’t changed since I left,” Marinette quipped back, seemingly choosing to ignore his question. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him, leading the way to her chaise.

Adrien’s heart did another flip. Why did this girl make him feel like…this? How did she look at him like…like _that_? It really wasn’t fair. 

He pouted to himself, and launched forwards onto her chaise before she could sit down.

“Chaton!”

He buried his face in one of her throw pillows. Mm. This smelled like vanilla, too.

“Adrien Agreste, you better move your butt right now or I’ll sit on you.”

Adrien hummed into the pillow, but didn’t make any effort to move. He heard Marinette’s feet shuffle awkwardly against the floor for a second before she plopped herself down on top of him. Her legs dangled over his torso as she flopped sideways to lay with her face next to his.

He turned his head to look at her.

“You know I really, really missed you, right?” she whispered. The pink light gave her face an almost ethereal glow, and, if he tried, he could nearly picture the Ladybug mask perfectly fitting over her features as she stared at him.

He nodded, swallowing. He couldn’t tell if her cheeks looked pink because of the lighting, or because she was blushing. Either way, it was cute. He’d missed seeing it in person.

“Seeing you over video call just isn’t the same,” he said.

Marinette smiled, brushing a stray hair from her face. “It really isn’t.”

“Have you finished that design you said you were working on?” Adrien asked. He lifted his head from the pillow, and his eyes flitted to Marinette’s desk.

It was just as cluttered as he’d expected it to be—loose sketchbook papers dangling precariously off the edge, and pens and pencils strewn across the surface. It looked like she’d moved her entire work station from Milan into her bedroom.

“I finished it. Obviously I haven’t started sewing it, yet, but the sketch is done and I have the fabric.”

Adrien smiled, turning back to her. “That’s awesome, Marinette. You’re so talented. You really deserved that internship.”

Marinette frowned, but her cheeks were still pink. “You’ve said that before.”

Adrien shifted so his palm supported the side of his head as he laid sideways, facing her. “And I’ll say it a million more times because it’s true.”

Marinette snorted and looked away, but she was smiling. “Flatterer,” she said.

He chuckled. His eyes caught on her wrist, where a familiar, blue and yellow charm bracelet was wrapped.

She still had it? His was back at his apartment, sitting on his nightstand.

He reached out and brushed his fingers across the beads, drawing Marinette’s attention down to them.

“Oh, yeah. I still wear that a lot. Fourteen year old Adrien had good jewelry designing skills.”

She fiddled with the string, and her fingers brushed against his. He shuddered involuntarily. 

Marinette didn’t seem to notice, though. Her eyes had gone distant as she stared down at the bracelet on her wrist.

“I can’t believe how young we were,” she said quietly. “I mean, when we first started being Ladybug and Chat Noir, we were only thirteen. We defeated Hawkmoth when we were nineteen. And now…”

Adrien blinked across at her as her eyes shifted to look at him. They were startlingly blue. The only time he could think of them being that blue was the first day he’d met her as Chat Noir. Had it really been so long ago, now?

She bit her lip, and his attention flickered down to it before snapping back up to her eyes.

 _No, no, no, no._ While they’d never said anything about their feelings after the reveal, he knew how she felt. She liked someone else. She’d told him as such a million times before. So to look at her like this now would just be setting his heart up for future failure.

Nevertheless, as her eyes bore into his, he felt the overwhelming need to say something. Anything. To admit what he’d been feeling ever since she left, heck, ever since he first met her.

Screwing up all his courage, he opened his mouth. 

“I still love you.”

“I love you.”

“ _What?_ ”

“ _What?_ ”

Adrien stared in shock at Marinette’s equally petrified face. They’d spoken at the same time, but he thought she’d said…

“What did you say?” he asked.

Marinette blushed, her cheeks going dark even in the room’s pale lighting. “What did _you_ say?”

“That’s not fair. I asked first.”

“You spoke first.”

“I think we actually spoke at the same time.”

Marinette huffed. She scooted back on the chaise so her face was a bit farther away from his, much to his disappointment, and remained silent.

He sighed, looking down at her bracelet between them again.

“I said that…um…I still love you,” he admitted. He looked back up at her to make the admittance as sincere as possible. “I just needed to tell you that. Ever since I met you, and then when you left…” Adrien rolled off, getting lost in the wide eyes staring back at him. “I’m sorry,” he finally whispered.

There was a moment of complete silence, then Marinette spoke.

“Why are you apologizing?” she asked.

Adrien shrugged, glancing up at the ceiling above them. “I know you said a million times that you like someone else. I feel bad making you listen to my feelings over and over but I just had to tell you.”

He glanced back down, and suddenly Marinette was right there—literally inches from his face—and she was grinning.

“It was you,” she said. “The guy I said I liked? It was always you.”

Adrien frowned, trying to make sense of this new information. She’d rejected him, for him?

Looking at her, the pieces finally started to click into place. The way she had stuttered around him that oddly vanished after the reveal. How she’d been afraid to stay in a room alone with him at the wax museum. The many times Alya had interviewed him for the Ladyblog, post reveal, and not-so-subtly hinted that Ladybug was looking at him differently. He’d ignored it, because he thought Alya must have been joking.

Had she been serious?

“Me?” Adrien forced out. His voice cracked at the end, much to his embarrassment.

Marinette nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just…I get so scared. I still don’t know how you do it. How you just…let your feelings out so easily.”

Adrien’s gaze softened as he watched her speak. The arm that wasn’t trapped under her side was flailing in the air, gesturing as she rambled on. It was something she’d done both as Marinette and Ladybug.

“I mean, isn’t it hard? I get that the hardest words are the most important to say, but…the point is that they’re hard! I’m twenty years old and I still get nervous around you. You wouldn’t believe how many times I wanted to say something over the phone, but couldn’t force the words out. They got stuck! And then I’d see your face on video call and I’d think ‘oh no, oh kwamis, here we go again,’ and—”

Adrien took the hand that wasn’t busy flailing and squeezed it. Immediately, Marinette froze.

He giggled. “My lady—“

“Can I kiss you?”

It was Adrien’s turn to freeze. She wanted to kiss him? He knew she’d kissed him at least once before, while fighting Dark Cupid, but he didn’t remember it. He didn’t remember it and this would be his first kiss and _oh god_ did he even know how to kiss? He’d obviously done it before, but that had been Chat Noir controlled by an akuma. Did that mean the akuma had technically been kissing her? _Ew ew ew ew ew ew…_

Unable to speak or even look away, Adrien nodded.

Marinette leaned forwards, hesitantly closing the distance between them. Her eyes flickered down to his lips, and he followed her example. Her eyes fluttered shut, and his were about to do the same when…

“ _Ouch!_ ”

Their noses collided sharply, and Marinette drew back.

“Oh no. I’m sorry. I probably should have tilted my head or something—“

“Shoot. That was my fault, I’m sorry. I—“

They both giggled, and Adrien reached out to brush a lock of hair away from Marinette’s face. His eyes softened as he took in her wide eyes and embarrassed smile.

He’d really missed her.

“How about we try that again, M’Lady?” he asked, shooting her a teasing wink.

Marinette grinned, her posture relaxing. “Yeah. Okay.”

This time when they leaned in their noses didn’t bump. Instead, their lips met in a slow, soft kiss.

It was exactly how he’d always pictured it would be. Actually, maybe it was better. His heart swelled inside of his chest as Marinette drew back once, then leaned forwards to meet him again. He brought a hand up to cup her face, and she wrapped one arm around his neck to run her fingers through his hair. When they finally broke the second kiss, he rested his forehead against hers and smiled.

“I love you,” he said quietly.

“I love you, too.”

“I can’t believe I had to wait this long to kiss you and actually remember it.”

Marinette snickered. “I can’t believe I had to go all the way to Milan and back to work up the courage to kiss you.”

Adrien giggled, and Marinette lightly smacked his shoulder with the throw pillow. 

“What do you say we do patrol sometime, Kitty? Show Paris that their two superheroes are still around? Maybe give Alya the Ladynoir scoop she’s been dying for?” she said. 

Adrien’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes. Paris missed you, you know.” 

“Paris missed us,” she corrected. 


End file.
